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August 31, 2025

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EDITORIALS

Sep 20, 2007

A vital graying society

The nation is now in the midst of the Week of the Aged. As the theme suggests, the government and the people must rack their brains to figure out how to build a graying society full of vitality. The internal affairs ministry's report says there were an estimated 27.44 million people aged 65 or over as...

COMMENTARY / World

Sep 20, 2007

Filipinos respectful of a star's conviction

By Roby Alampay

BANGKOK — Joseph Estrada, the disgraced former president of the Philippines, faces the prospect of spending his remaining years in prison after a special court in Manila found him guilty of amassing around $15 million in bribes and kickbacks. During the 30 months he ruled his country, from mid-1998...

COMMENTARY

Sep 20, 2007

Another Japanese prime minister falls

By Tom Plate

LOS ANGELES — Japan is of gigantic importance to the United States and to the world. This nation — of 127 million people squeezed into one relatively small island — developed into the second-largest economy in the world.

COMMENTARY

Sep 20, 2007

Decline of the Liberal Democratic Party?

By Gwynne Dyer

LONDON — Sixty-two years after Japan surrendered to the United States at the end of World War II, many things have changed, but not Japan's subordination to the U.S. Despite having the world's second-biggest economy, Japan is still a pygmy on the international stage, and its foreign policy is still...

EDITORIALS

Sep 19, 2007

New penalties for cooking the books

The revised Certified Public Accountant Law will go into effect by April 2008, enabling authorities to deal strongly with audit corporations involved in irregularities. It is hoped the revised law will help halt accounting fraud. But it must also be realized that severer administrative action is not...

EDITORIALS

Sep 19, 2007

Countering the lawyer shortage

As Japan introduces the lay judge system in 2009, court-appointed lawyers with state funds will start being assigned to suspects for most crimes before indictment. Thus nationwide demand for lawyers will rise. The problem is that three-quarters of the some 23,100 lawyers in Japan are concentrated in...

EDITORIALS

Sep 18, 2007

Lay judges and media freedom

By May 2009, Japan will introduce a lay judge system in which six ordinary citizens will sit with three professional judges to take part in trials of suspects charged with serious crimes such as murder, arson and rape. As preparations for the new system advance, the Supreme Court and the Japan Federation...

EDITORIALS

Sep 18, 2007

Self-sufficiency amid diversity

Japan's food self-sufficiency rate for fiscal 2006 declined to 39 percent in terms of calories supplied. This is the first time the rate has dipped below 40 percent since fiscal 1993 when the rate fell to 37 percent due to a poor rice crop. Japan's food self-sufficiency rate is clearly low when compared...

COMMENTARY

Sep 17, 2007

How to downsize Bush's 'axis of evil'

By Tom Plate

LOS ANGELES — The "axis of evil" has certainly proven one tough triangle with which to tangle. But is it about to be downsized? As defined by U.S. President George Bush in his 2002 State of the Union address, this putative axis triangulates Iraq, Iran and North Korea. But is one of them on the verge...

COMMENTARY

Sep 17, 2007

U.S. power and Japan's role

By Kazuo Ogoura

There have been no signs of deterioration in U.S. power over the past decade, measured either militarily, economically, or in terms of "soft power"; this is true both in absolute terms and in comparison with other countries.

COMMENTARY / World

Sep 17, 2007

Once again, musical chairs at the Kremlin

By Nina L. Khrushcheva

VIENNA — It's that time again: Russia's pre-election season when prime ministers are changed as in a game of musical chairs. The last one seated, it is supposed, will become Russia's next president. As the end of his rule approached, Boris Yeltsin went through at least a half-dozen prime ministers,...

EDITORIALS

Sep 17, 2007

Transparency in Tehran

The International Atomic Energy Agency has struck a deal with Iran that could answer unresolved questions about that country's nuclear capabilities. Western governments worry that the agreement is a sham, intended only to head off international sanctions against Iran for having a clandestine nuclear...

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Tetsuzo Shiraishi, speaking at The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, uses a thermos to explain how he experienced the U.S. firebombing of March 1945, when he was just 7 years old.

From ashes to high-rises: A survivor’s account of Tokyo’s postwar past

By Alex K.T. Martin

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Maruhachi never sleeps in quest for better futons

Maruhachi never sleeps in quest for better futons

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